Reconstruction
by Glitterglue
Summary: The Stark sisters rebuild Winterfell, their family, and themselves.
1. The Kennels

Disclaimer: Not mine

A/N: First fic in a long time, and I'm definitely still feeling out how to write these characters.

The night Arya came home, winter was in its final throes, but the snowdrifts were still lapping over the outer curtain wall, blowing snow as fine as dust over all of Winterfell. It was all the men could do to dig out paths between the reconstructed buildings, which were really just the great hall and family chambers, the kitchens, and half the stables. The gates themselves couldn't be opened; save for the Hunter's gate by the ruined kennels, even if anyone had seen her approach. As it was, no one claimed to have admitted her into the castle, heard her calling from beyond the walls, or noticed her tracks.

But there she was all the same, sitting quietly in a rough hewn chair in the solar that had once been their father's, sipping mulled wine that no one in the kitchens had seen her take.

When Sansa saw her there, both of their faces so different even in the anemic light of a tallow candle, she felt as if she would faint and did nothing more than breathe for a moment. When the disbelief passed, she sat beside her at the low table and accepted the cup of wine Arya held out to her.

"I didn't look for you," she chose these words to break the silence, because it felt like anything else, any relief or kindness, tears and smiles, would be a lie until she had told her.

"I hid, changed my name and hair and family. I hid in the Vale and never once thought to look for you. I prayed to the Mother and the Maid that you lived, but didn't really hope."

Arya did not look mad or hurt, or _anything_ in truth. Sansa kept waiting for her to bite her lip like she always did. She didn't even jiggle her leg.

"I knew where you were and I didn't come for you either. I knew Winterfell had fallen and Jon had been reborn. I knew that you had not killed Joffrey, even though you should have. I knew who Alayne Stone was, and I didn't come for you."

"Arya..."

"I lived, Sansa, and so did you. Winterfell is ours again. These are the things that matter, not how we managed it."

"Where were you?"

Arya just took her hand.

They drank the rest of the wine, spoke very little, and clasped hands under the table until morning came. As Arya clutched Rickon to her chest and pressed one of Bran's hands to her lips, Sansa fled to the collapsed kennels, scrambling over debris and snow packed into rock. Then she pounded her fists against the rotting wood and wept and wept and wept. _Thank you_, she thought as she buried her face in her hands, _thank you thank you thank you._

Later that day, Winterfell's master-at-arms fell into step beside her as they left the solar for the lower levels.

"Why do you look displeased?" Sansa hissed as she and her siblings trotted down to the Godswood, Bran insisted on acknowledging Arya's return to the old gods. Hodor hummed happily at his lord's joy.

His face remained passive, "Do I not always looked displeased?"

On another day Sansa would have rolled her eyes, but today she fought the desire to kick his shin, "Even more than usual."

"How did she get in, my lady?"

Sansa shook her head, confused, "I did not ask her."

"And where had she been, my lady?"

Sansa halted for a moment, pretending to adjust her skirts, allowing the others to gain distance, although Summer turned his massive head to look at her, his ears twitching in a way she found suspicious, "She would not say."

He opened his mouth to speak but she held up a hand to stop him, "I won't distrust my sister. There are things about out time apart that I will never tell her either. There are things…" she paused to inhale sharply before starting anew, "We Starks survived because we were made for winter. And we know that sometimes, honor is a summertime virtue, for songs and harvests, and knights who only lift a sword for tourneys. I'm sure she did what she had to. Just as we did."

"Have you left your honor behind, little bird?" he asked innocently, but the burnt half of his lips twitched slightly.

"I will not say," she told him primly, gathering her skirts to catch up to her family.

She barely let Arya out of her sight for days, worried that her brothers had been gift enough and that her only sister's life must be a dream or cruel trick. She sat beside her at meals and attended her at baths and insisted she sleep with her at night, until her own chambers might be outfitted. Her favorite part of the day was when Arya pushed the long wooden tables of the great hall against the walls and used the empty room to teach Rickon the Braavosi style of swordplay or spar with the Hound using long wooden staffs.

"So you were in Braavos," Sansa said after the first of such lessons, smiling as Arya retied her short brown hair with a piece of twine. "Is that where you learned to use a sword?"

"I learned the waterdance while we were still in King's Landing. My dance lessons, remember?"

Sansa did, she remembered the angry black bruises on Arya's knuckles and the weeks where half-infected cat scratches lined her arms. "Then you were not in Braavos?"

Arya only answered, "The snow has stopped and the sky seems clear. Bran's set some of the men to raise a new roof on the kennels."

That night Arya came to her chambers and collected the clothes Sansa's had had the seamstress make. Arya had been empty handed when she returned.

"I've had a cot placed in Robb's old room, I'll be sleeping there from now on."

Sansa's stomach dropped, the fear of losing her, even if it was just to another part of the keep, ignited a panic that made her chest feel tight, "No! You may stay with me! We always slept together as girls when it was winter, otherwise we'd freeze!"

"I think there is someone else who misses warming your bed more than me, Sansa."

Discretion was a second nature to Sansa, had been for years. Brown dye could be washed from hair but she would never be clean of the stain that Petyr left.

"How could you possibly know that?"

Arya did not answer. It was not fair that most of her answers were silence.

"I am not asking for details, Arya. I have not asked if you were beaten or raped or slaved! I have not asked if you've killed men or stolen or forsaken our gods. But you are a stranger to me now, Arya. All I am asking is _where were you_?"

Arya put her clothing down and drew her sister into a hug. Sansa, a whole head taller than her fierce sibling, rested her chin atop Arya's brown thicket of hair.

"I wasn't harmed, not as you fear I was if I had been a prettier child. But the rest of those things…." She didn't have to say anymore. She gathered up her clothing and unlatched the door, and whispered, "I am a stranger to myself now, too."

When Sandor Clegane slipped into her bed in the dark hours before dawn, Sansa merely turned her face into his neck and let him stroke her hair.

"She will not tell me."

"Have you told her where you were?"

"Aye," Sansa ran a hand under his linen shirt to rest above his heart, "That I hid in the Vale."

"No," Clegane propped himself onto one elbow. "You were never in the Eyrie, it was Alayne Stone. Just as it was some brutish brother on the Quiet Isle, never truly me. Tell me, bird, where was Sansa Stark?"

_I am a stranger to myself now, too. _

The kennels were completed after only a handful a days, and while they waited for one of the bitches to whelp, Arya regaled Sansa with tales of Beric Dondarrion's hollow eyes and Thoros of Myr's fiery kiss. Sansa told Arya how their aunt truly died.


	2. The Stables

A.N.: Another snap shot in one possible future, this one takes places prior to the first chapter, and is decidedly more SanSan than the previous. These will keep coming as long as I find moments to write.

Bran was made uncomfortable by the whole ordeal, but he was no fool, and he could see the sense in it, even before Sansa explained her reasons. No man had ever touched her and if she was to garner a worthy match, her purity must be proven.

The septon of White Harbor made the journey to Winterfell, along with four septas. They alone were in the room, Sansa in a simple shift. It took but a moment, really, although it felt like more while she lay upon her back and stared at the soot stained rafters of her parent's chamber.

If she knew it was that easy, she would have requested it moons ago.

The castle suspected the reason for the faith's official presence, at the very least, although this scrap of skin meant little to the northerners. They called her the Maiden Queen all the same, pure as new fallen snow, calm as a frozen lake.

No one stood guard outside the door, Sandor Clegane was cutting beams for the stables with a ferocity he himself barely understood.

A feast was held after a fortnight passed to celebrate the mistress Stark's annulment and to officially introduce her to gentle suitors. Sandor Clegane spent the night dead drunk huddled in the half-built stables, Stranger's horse blanket caught most of his sick.

"I have seen you very little these past few days," Sansa sat beside him as he broke his fast at the far benches, well below the salt. The wine from the night before left his tongue heavy and his mind clogged so he chose a simple answer.

"There has been little need of me."

"You were not at my feast, Man," after countless exchanges in which he insisted that he needed no other name than 'Hound,' Sansa had acquired the defiant habit of simply calling him 'Man.' It still galled him enough to lash out.

"You mean your appraisal? Will you return to the auction block now that your worth has been established?"

If there had been more people around to see her react so childishly, he was sure she'd have stayed her tongue. But the hall was almost deserted, so she knocked his horn of ale and plate of fried bread and bacon across his lap and said, "My worth is more than any man can take from me."

She was gone in an angry swirl of grey skirts and white snow.

His path did not cross hers for many days, until a break in the snowfall allowed him to bring the young master into the training yard, blocking his awkward blows with a blunted tourney blade. The wildling woman, who reminded him oddly of himself, watching over Rickon so much like he had Joffrey, sat in the doorway to the collapsed kennels, sharpening a knife on a small whetstone.

"No boy, if you attack you must put your whole weight behind a blow! Swing with your hips." Rickon's next thrust was sloppier than the first. "I do not believe you were really on that wretched island, moving like that, you'd not have survived!"

When the lesson was over, Sandor helped the boy up, brushing hay from his hair with a light touch he never had for Joffrey.

"I did survive on Skagos," he told him, pouting only a little, "Me'n Osha hunted unicorns."

He raised his eyebrows and laughed gruffly, "Unicorns don't exist anymore, boy."

"Yes, they do," he crossed his arms and scrunched his forehead, "Right, Osha?"

The wildling woman nodded from her perch, "Aye, they're real, we hunted them with spears, the young master nearly killed one himself."

"Nearly? What happened, my little lord?"

Rickon shrugged, clasping his hands behind his back, "It got away, it was too fast."

There was a sharp thump and Rickon yelped as the whetstone hit him squarely in the head. "Do not lie, Rickon," Osha called.

"I did not want to kill it!" he admitted loudly, "It was too…it was all white, like the snow, like Starks. It was not scared of Shaggydog. It had hair the color of weirwood leaves, like Sansa. And it let me touch it, and when I did, I saw my mother." With that Rickon began to cry softly, and Sandor could see he was ashamed. The wildling woman saved his from having to comfort the boy, she gathered him in her arms and walked him towards the keep.

"When they returned, I was worried living in exile with a wildling would have ruined Rickon," Sansa appeared at his side, brushing the light powder of snow that had just begun to fall from her hair, "But she has an honor that most men lack. And she is teaching him to be a good man. I think learning to be a lord can wait until that has been done."

Sandor stooped to retrieve the whetstone, "An honest one, at least."

"You are a good man, too, Sandor," she said after a silence, quietly.

"If you say so, my lady. As it were, at least I am a man."

They walked slowly back towards the keep, pausing to watch the men work on the stables, nearly half of which was complete. There was not enough horseflesh for the whole structure to needed, even if there were supplies available to be used.

Turning behind a large drift, Sansa paused, before reaching up to brush some of the snow from his hair now, then tuck the loose strands behind his remaining ear.

"Why do you think I asked you here, Man?"

He had wondered that often, in the few years he had called Winterfell home. When winter had truly come and the Seven Kingdoms had no more blood to bleed, only dragons remained. Sansa's bastard brother, nay cousin, had spared him. Because she asked it, begged him. The Targaryen Queen was mercy herself, the Mother made flesh, and she bent under Sansa's tears. But the other, Jon, he could see Sandor's heart and did not love him for it.

"Honestly, I don't know, my lady.

"I believe you don't," she answered, and if she weren't so still, the queen of ice, he would have though she sounded a little sad. "Why do you not call me 'bird' anymore? I know if was meant to mock me but," she bit her lip and peered at him curiously, "but I grew to like it. I thought that was why you insist on still being called 'Hound.' But you let everyone call you that. Only you may call me 'little bird.'"

He was left wondering what that meant as she touched his cheeks tenderly, and swept away.

Ravens came and went, flapping into Bran's outstretched hands whenever the weather permitted. In his mind, they were petitions for her hand, offers of a future he refused to imagine. Knightly sons and pretty, wide-eyed daughters. She would have to accept one, someday, he knew. Maybe not until winter was finally finished tormenting them. What he did not know was what he would do them, where he would belong. He had come for her, stayed for her, found something that looked like honor, albeit scuffed and limping and oh so scarred, for her. She had let him become something more than before. A man.

Weeks flew by on dark wings and unknown words, the constant discomfort and agitation grew almost unnoticed with every passing day, just like the minutes of sunlight. Anger was such a familiar presence that he barely noticed it until he was being so rough with the young master that the wildling woman was hurling rocks at his head during their training sessions. The Quiet Isle had never been his home, but he had listened well enough to the curt elder brother enough to know that he'd do more damage to himself and everyone around him if he carried on this way.

"Will I still be welcome here when you marry?" he was seated beside her at an ugly little table in her solar while she broke her fast. "Will I be kept on as master-of-arms?"

She looked at him quizzically, putting down her cup of cider, "I did not know I was betrothed. Bran had not told me."

He glared at her and fought the urge to pound his fist on the table, "Someday you must marry."

"By whose orders? My brother has never spoken of it, and I am in no great hurry to be bound to another man," she laughed dryly.

"Then why bring the septon here, why annul your marriage to the Imp, after all these years?"

She simply shook her head slightly and closed her eyes, "Well, I am not a fool, I know enough to keep options. And as to why now? I am a woman grow, truly, not just flowered. I may make my own decisions in my own time. Besides, the faith has named me a maid before the whole of the Seven Kingdoms. If I marry someday none will question my innocence. But unless I am forced, I will never leave Winterfell."

"Why would they have need to question it, little bird?" he spoke the name unconsciously, in truth he had never ceased to call her that in his own mind.

When she opened her eyes, they looked more alive than he had seen in a very long time, since the day her brothers had come home. And then she smiled.

"I will keep my worth for myself, that I cannot give. But you may have the rest. Whatever you still wish to have, after waiting all this time. You will guard my door this night, Sandor, Man. And every night to come. I will never leave Winterfell."

review please!


	3. The Glass Gardens

A/N: Number 3, this takes place in the few years after Arya's return. There's some off-color humor and sexual situations, but nothing too serious.

Disclaimer: not mine.

Arya stared sightlessly out the window of her chamber, shifting uncomfortably in her dress, watching the men below as they fitted the final panels into the new glass garden. Spring had thawed the frozen northern ground into something malleable, from which life and growth could be forced and wrestled. After years of unyielding darkness and cold, covered and untouched, the soil was weak. The harvest would be poor for more years still, but snow only fell at night now, and the hoarfrost evaporated with sunrise.

_But flowers_, Sansa thought wistfully_,_ sitting beside the squat, square table in the middle of the room,_ there will be no flowers without the glass garden. _

Arya simply raised her hand and pressed her small palm against the fogged pane and said, "There is humor in this," although there was none of the attitude in her voice.

Sansa couldn't guess her meaning, so she merely poured herself another glass of mulled wine. The chambermaids had all been dismissed, Arya couldn't abide their fussing, and all there was left to do was empty the flagon, survey the men, and wait for Hodor to fetch them.

Arya drained her cup and turned back to her, abandoning the handprint upon the glass, and held it out for more wine, "Sister, I go a maid to my marriage bed."

Sansa looked up sharp and felt something inside roar with fierce joy, although her face remained placid. Arya had never confessed her many secrets, and Sansa had long given up any attempt to guilt them out. So instead her maternal and anxious mind had filled in Arya's past with the many piercing pains Sansa herself had faced. She kept herself from voicing any of this, tipping the flagon above Arya's cup and said, "Where is the humor in that, Arya? That is as it should be."

She snorted, "Then you have not heard the newest rumor from the Wintertown, that I sheltered during the war in a Lysene pleasure house. Or that I was held captive by a Tyroshi pirate as a reward for his men. Or that I managed to escape King's Landing only as Ser Beric's bedwarmer. Trust me, Sansa, there is not a man in Westeros who believes I am…" she scrunched her nose in distaste, "… unspoiled."

Sansa had heard the rumors, likely more of them than Arya herself, each one more lurid and debauched than the one that came before it. Bran would look lost and Jon would look murderous and Rickon did not understand the gravity. But Sansa would just laugh and wave her hands dismissively. She would flip her hair and insist that Arya was much too ferocious to be mounted without consent.

But then she would cry, hiding in the ruins of the First Keep, since the kennels had been repaired, and pray to the Old Gods that none of them were true. They two, the last Stark woman, _have we nothing left that_ _has not been taken?_ she would scream.

The last time she had done so, the Hound, her man now, had found her and cursed softly as he gripped her around the elbows and lifted her to her feet.

_"Come now," he whispered hoarsely, wiping away tears with hands that were rough even when used gently, "You are a great lady now, you will not cry over imagined hurts."_

_"Then I can cry over remembered ones," she'd shot back bitterly, shoving his comforting hands away as if the sentiment offended her._

_Instead he grasped her hands roughly and pinned them to her sides, "You can also kneel in your damned Godswood and thank the white trees the she-wolf came back at all. You may weep for your dead and your lost, but not for the ones you have been given back, just because they are not as you remember them."_

_"Will you never let me act childish again?" she had asked, her eyes drying suddenly as the wisdom of his words penetrated the desperate fog swirling about her chest._

_He chuckled, the sound of rushes being swept across an uneven floor, and walked her backwards until her back was pressed against the wall. "You are not a child anymore, Sansa," he reminded her as he began to unlace her bodice with one hand, the other reaching down to heave up her skirts, "You showed me that yourself."_

Now, when Sansa felt the desire the mourn scraping at her ribs like a disease, she thought instead of Lady's bones in the lichyard, and was determined to be grateful for what had been given, even if it was also taken away.

She was wrenched suddenly from these memories as Arya continued derisively, mocking her soiled reputation, "Honestly, I do not know where I found the time to bed so many men. I should have an army of mine own bastards just like the Queen's eunuchs. "

Sansa shook her head, "No one of any import believes them, especially your betrothed."

At this Arya smiled, a small one, letting the expression breach the still lake she typically wore. _She was such a loud child_, Sansa remembered. Always defiant, always questioning, like a cauldron of wine threatening to boil over. This new Arya was subtle, careful; she never gave away a thought and played every conversation like a round of _cyvasse_. Before the war she would have been the sister of Sansa's blossoming dreams, but now the relief Sansa felt every time she caught her eye was tempered with a melancholy she could not be rid of.

_She's a liar now_, Sansa had realized not long after their reunion, the kind of liar Littlefinger had made of her. _Where were you, Arya?_

"My betrothed," Arya mused dryly, "is the only man who would not care. He loved me before he knew anything of women but fevered dreams and a wet spot on his belly in the morning."

"Arya!" Sansa exclaimed, color flooding her cheeks, spreading down to her bust.

Now it was Arya's turn to roll her eyes, setting the wine upon the table and dropping into a chair, "Oh, Sansa! Don't look so scandalized, I am the blushing maid, remember? And you are wedded …" Arya trailed off, "and much later bedded."

"Oh, you are horrible!" Sansa told her, but there was no real anger behind it. Sansa raised the cup of wine to her lips, in fact, to hide a smug smile.

"And you are noisy," she shot back, "While I am melting in the heat of the Stormlands at least I will not be woken every morning by the sound of your… swordplay!"

"No," Sansa parried, the wine giving her a brazenness typically reserved for the man that shared her bed, "You will be woken by your husband's prodding and the wet spot will now be on _your_ belly."

Arya threw her head back and erupted with laughter, the effortless sound warming Sansa's chest more than the drink. But it came with the familiar, ever-present grief; she had grown accustomed to Arya's presence in the months and months it took spring to unfurl, the courage she took from her sister's certain strength, the selfish comfort in providing her absolute love. Losing that to marriage struck the breath from her lungs.

"Do you love him?" Sansa asked, hoping Arya would tell her the truth, even though she would never be able to tell if she lied.

Arya quieted, her face not a face at all, but a mask, "I do not know how to love any man that is not father or brother." She said it simply and Sansa knew that it was not false. "But he is my friend, and he does love me. He will let me wear breeches and ride on hunts. He will not bed me without consent or ever try to strike me." Arya smiled again, although this one was not as convincing as the last, "He will make me laugh, and when we argue he will let me win."

Sansa understood something then, an option that she thought outside the possible, "Bran did not arrange this match, did he?"

Arya shook her head, "He wouldn't dare try to make me."

"Then why? Why marry at all?" Sansa considered putting her hand on Arya's knee like their mother always did, but she knew it was something even the old Arya would resent. "You can wear anything you like in Winterfell. And you win all our arguments already."

Arya fell silent, sipping thoughtfully at her wine, jiggling her leg. "Do you remember how it felt, Sansa? When Bran and Rickon were dead, Father and Mother and Robb. Jon was lost to you and I was nowhere? When they married you to the Imp. Do you remember what it felt like to be the last of our line, and to have been the one to lose Winterfell?"

_I died_, Sansa thought, _And was reborn as something less_. But she only answered, "Yes." _Where were you, Arya?_

"There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. When winter comes the lone wolf dies but the pack survives. We lost each other once, I will not let it happen again."

"And how will you do that from Storm's End?"

Arya huffed, the shaking of her leg increasing and she worried her lip before speaking, "Bran will never father children. Rickon, not for years. You will not marry the Hound, although I do not know why, Bran would not deny you. So I will breed, whelp as many wolf pups as I can, and give Storm's End and Winterfell the heirs we need."

Speechless, Sansa could do little more than laugh herself. It was comical to imagine Arya's fervent desire to marry was born from a maternal drive. "The responsibility is not just yours, Arya," Sansa told her once she had cut off her decidedly unladylike scoff. "I will marry again someday. To Sandor if he will agree, once Bran is secure and Rickon older, once the north is healed. I will whelp too, and we will be safe because we will be many. We can be _strong_, Arya," she whispered, "And I will never let something be taken from you again."

The sisters smiled at one another; sad and worn and true smiles that made Sansa see her father in the younger's face. She startled at a knock on the door and the muffled, "_Hodor?" _but Arya didn't look surprised.

"Sister, I go a maid to my marriage bed," Arya told her with no lack of irony.

"Yes," Sansa clapped her hands together in a businesslike manner, dabbed the corners of her eyes and stood, "And if you truly wish to bear loads of children, the wet spot should not really be on your belly."

Hodor was greeted with the bawdy laughter of his ladies. "I told you, Sansa," Arya grinned, "There is humor in this."


End file.
